A Delicate Balance of Flavors
by Talik Sanis
Summary: Marinette is content to defer to Andre when he reminds her that too many flavors may throw off the delicate balance between them, but a tenuous balance simply requires more hard work to maintain. Fortunately for Marinette, both Kagami and Adrien are used to hard work. Together, they start down a path on which they can live, and love who they want, freely.
1. Finding the Right Combination

A Delicate Balance of Flavors

* * *

Author's notes appear at the end of the story.

* * *

How could she have failed to realize that this weird, heady day spent between Adrien and Kagami, both of them brilliant, caring, _friends_ would end in pain? The temptation to surrender to the beautiful illusion the pair had helped her to create had simply been too much to resist, a siren song that seduced her down into the depths to drown in cloying happiness.

How could all that joy end with so ridiculous and innocent a question: "What ice cream flavors do you want?"

There really was no choice – not for the ice cream, of course. The real choice had been made all those weeks ago when she had resolved to play "wing-woman" to Adrien on his date with his perfectly-matched fencing partner, who was just as intelligence, beautiful, and poised as him. She deserved him, could empathize with him in a way that Marinette herself never could.

Because she _was_ everything that Marinette was not.

Marinette was just a third wheel, desperate to cling on to the last vestiges of her childish crush, holding back the burgeoning couple.

Even as the strange flavour combinations proposed by Andre rattled about in her head, she knew that this kind of selfishness did not befit a superhero. For all her vaunted tactical genius, her ability to orchestrate the impossible with the most improbable of tools, she couldn't force any of the ice cream flavours to fit. Mint, and orange, and... she couldn't even remember any longer as the tastes blurred and mangled one another, even inside her mind.

There really was no choice.

In that moment of resolve, of determination to once again put Adrien's happiness ahead of her own desires, she was interrupted.

###

"Wait." Kagami's voice rang out. "What about..." Her gaze fell upon the lopsided, trusting smile on Adrien's face, honest, unlike the majority of his perfect, reserved grins that she knew so well, having practiced them in the mirror herself. They graced his modelling shots, enthralling his fans, and never reached his eyes. Those damnable photo shoots. Magazine editors and their teams of photoshop experts always seemed to digitally alter his pictures to add an unnatural golden sheen to his... hair...

"-lemon," Kagami concluded. "Lemon drizzle."

Andre responded with a somewhat dubious look before delving into his ice cream cart, shifting through its contents.

Much as she loved ice cream, and savoured it on those rare occasions that she was able to break her stringent diet, which consisted mostly of lean chicken breast, eggs, and broccoli when she was not allowed to partake of traditional Japanese cuisine, Kagami knew precious little about the exotic combinations offered by the supposedly mystical Andre.

The stall sported several unidentifiable vials – why were there vials on an ice cream cart? - and bristled with tubs, unorthodox labels ranging from "Burnt Coconut" to "Pickled Mango" and ... "Foie Gras?!" Devilry. Disgusting, and disgustingly inhumane at that.

The generally genial Andre, brow pinched, the pudge around his cheeks and neck folding into a doughy mass that all but obliterated his bone structure, leaned slightly closer to her. "Do you really think that you can find flavours that work together? Too many, and they may start to clash. Simple and clean. That's the best for ice cream."

"He – he's right, guys," Marinette muttered, stepping forward and interposing herself between Andre's cart and her two friends as she waved them off almost frantically. "Who are we to tell Andre how to do his job? He's the ice cream expert."

"We, Marinette, are paying customers," Kagami began, the withering gaze she so often leveled at her fencing opponents - Adrien excluded - directed over the other girl's shoulder to fix on the lightly-smiling man behind her, "capable of making our own choices about what we like and what we want to eat."

"Yeah, Marinette," Adrien said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. Although Kagami herself had been well aware of the pair's shared affection, however stubbornly unrecognized the feelings went on Adrien's part, that moment of intimacy, the few seconds of warmth that they shared, felt... wholesome - inspiring a feeling that was nothing at all like the unreasoning rage that she experienced when Lila photographed herself alongside the model, posing as his girlfriend.

"You helped us get out here so that we could just-" he shrugged and sighed. "Today, we're not letting our parents tell us what we should do." Adrien continued, as Marinette appeared trapped in his eyes. Kagami empathized. "Why should we let Andre-" with that, he winced, casting an apologetic glance towards the rotund, though still rather imposing man, who dwarfed the admittedly scrawny teen. If Andre had been offended, he gave no indication of his ire, responding the boy's furtive glance with an affirming nod.

Adrien cleared his throat. "If we're forgetting about our parents' expectations, why should we let Andre, or anyone else, tell us what combination of flavors works for us - what flavors we're _allowed_ to have?"

Even had Adrien failed to intervene on her behalf, Kagami was not one to back down from a challenge. Still, as he squeezed Marinette's shoulder, she couldn't repress the swell of gratitude; it never hurt to have a partner at your back, or a cheering section.

Adrien Agreste in a cheerleader uniform. Either a good thought, a bad thought, or both at once.

Marinette, on the other hand, stood rigidly, evidently abashed as she stared up into the model's eyes, her face falling into a grim, tight-set frown as if she was still wavering on the edge of a resolution. It was such a terrible look on her; she was meant for upbeat laughter and playful teasing, the kind they shared only minutes ago when she had emerged from the ball pit, guiding Adrien and Kagami in their experience of a childish joy that neither had ever imagined, her hair disheveled and loose and shimmering in the afternoon sunlight, so black that it was nearly blue...

"- berries."

Andre quirked his brow at her as Marinette seemed, once again, to lose her nerve.

After coughing once, Kagami continued. "Blueberry ice cream."

When the larger man appeared disinclined to return to his cart, Adrien pulled away from Marinette to interject with a slightly timid, "Please." A hand found the back of his neck. "That is, if you wouldn't mind, sir."

The chuckle that rocked through Andre's form sent his doughy figure shuddering, the motion only quieting when he pressed his hands to the belly that jiggled long after he had stopped chortling.

"And how could I turn down so polite a request, young man?"

Hands clasped, Adrien responded with a clipped half-bow of his neck and shoulders. "Thank you, sir."

And what else? It was silly, really. Any three flavors would go well together. What did it matter?

A hand trailed through her hair, upsetting the functional if unflattering bowl cut that her mother favored for her, denying her control over even the most frivolous element of her appearance such as her hair- style...

"Black raspberry," Kagami affirmed. "The last flavor should be black raspberry."

"A fruit medley," Andre mused as he turned to his cart. A flourish of his ice cream scoop later, and he had produced a combination of blue and black orbs. "Sweet and sour, chilly and invigorating, comforting and familiar, all at once."

What a thoroughly odd man.

"So, black for her hair, a girl cool but comforting as a night's rest." Another deft motion of his ice cream scoop, followed by the incorporation of several slivers of wafer and edible tooth picks. "Blue for her pigtails, a taste of childhood and home; and lemon for his locks, fair like the sun, surprising in its warmth," he finished, squeezing a viscous yellow liquid over several of the ice cream scoops.

Very little of that made sense to Kagami, largely because the descriptors were horribly awry and the grammar was terrible, unless her mother had hired the worst tutors imaginable. Still, the ice cream itself, which Andre passed on to her as Adrien stepped up, gentleman that he was, to pay, seemed impressive enough. Andre merely waved him off.

"It's my treat," Andre assured him. "Making this particularly interesting ice cream was a reward in itself."

###

What exactly, Marinette was forced to ask herself, was going on here?

The thin, drippy amalgam of ice cream and garnishes, some familiar from years spent in the Tom and Sabine boulangerie patisserie and others exotic, even to her, made a slow rotation in Kagami's hands. It was a melange of blue and opulent purples, offset by the vibrant, warm yellow of what appeared to be a remarkably thin lemon curd sauce whose rich colour made the two flavors of ice cream almost indistinguishable in compare.

Kagami brought the intricate collection of sticks and wafers to her mouth, hesitating only a moment to watch as the lemon sauce congealed and froze in place as it dribbled over a partially-melted orb of blueberry ice cream. No. Marinette realized – it was black raspberry. There was a hint of real fruit protruding from the cream sauce; otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to tell the two flavours apart from their colour at this distance.

Turning from Andre after again expressing a mingled apology and thanks, Adrien watched as Kagami ran her tongue across the small scoop of black raspberry, taking in a huff of breath. Without swallowing, she moved to the next orb, pressing her teeth into it in a dainty bite. A guttural hum of pleasure reverberated in her throat as it undulated, the Japanese teen gulping down her mouthful before parting her lips in a smile that showed off her teeth.

Teeth that were _decidedly_ not perfect, flecked with tiny particles of fruit, one of which had gotten caught up in her gum line. Marinette squirmed.

And then it was Adrien's turn, the young man making an eager grab for the treat, which Kagami denied to him for a moment, poking him in the chest with a rapier-like stab of her finger, before relenting. As he took the elaborate confection from Kagami's grasp, he offered her a small wink that set Marinette's heart aflutter still, and she had to hold off a swoon that would have been most unbecoming.

The model stared at the tiny dessert in his hands before delving into it, enveloping an orb of blueberry ice cream with his mouth and suckling up the lemon sauce, some of the quickly melting purple cream oozing out around his lips. He parted from the treat with a light taste of the blackberry, and broke off a small piece of wafer that he crunched on happily, holding the remainder of the ice cream in front of his chest.

A thin rivulet of lemon sauce leaked over the rim of a supporting layer of wafer, trailing down the edge of the young model's thumb. A slight grunt of disapproval escaped his lips before the confection was shifted to his other hand. He scraped his thumb along the trail of sauce and brought it to pink lips, laving his tongue over the pad of his finger to lick up the tart cream ... in a strangely cat-like fashion.

Then, he offered the treat to Marinette.

Her hand shuddered and heart palpitated, pulse throbbing inside her skull to the point that she was almost certain that she felt a migraine coming on, as she cast her eyes on Kagami, who, Marinette found, was already watching her – not with disdain or jealousy or anger, but ... she didn't know. She didn't know what that emotion was, but it was accompanied by a smile. That seemed enough.

Receiving the treat from Adrien's hands as if it was a precious gift, a token of affection - which no doubt made her appear to be an utter _spaz –_ Marinette almost thought that she could see the lingering glisten of Adrien and Kagame's saliva where they had tasted the ice cream. Lemon sauce refroze, frothed and melting into the various shades of purple, creating a slightly sickly-looking colour that Marinette found slightly unappetizing.

It was then that she realized that she had been staring for ... a long time, at least. How long? Likely far too long.

Neither Kagami nor Adrien seemed to be judging her in the least, the blonde all perpetually kind smiles and honeyed looks.

Under their shared, steady gaze, Marinette brought the treat to her lips with decidedly _un_steady hands, taking a pair of small bites from two of the slowly deforming orbs of ice cream while being certain to catch some of the lemon sauce. The latter exploded over her tongue, tart enough to have her pursing her cheeks just for a moment before the blueberry, fresh and vibrant caught up, battling back against the harsh flavour. Then, the black raspberry: fruity and mellow - less sugar content than red raspberry - and still slightly citrus, smoothing over the rough edges of the blueberry and lemon combination.

It ... worked. Of course it would. Marinette herself had sold dozens of Raspberry Lemon cakes with Blueberries, or lemon drizzle cake with blueberries and raspberries.

_Of_ _course_ it would work.

After swallowing down the remnants of her ice cream, Marinette cleared her throat, and, hand steady, thrust the artisanal dessert back to Kagami, who accepted it without comment.

"Should we get a seat?" Adrien asked, gesturing to the rows of benches that littered the nearby walkway.

"Let's," Kagami affirmed. With their ice cream in one hand, she slipped her arm under Adrien's and tugged him forward, relenting almost immediately when it became clear that the boy had planted his feet firmly.

"Are you coming Marinette?" he asked softly. His body twisted slightly, not out of Kagami's hold, but just enough to allow him to face the other girl.

"You should. You're ... a very dear friend, Marinette," Kagami insisted as she flicked the ice cream upwards in Marinette's direction. For some reason, her expression, and the hushed tone of her voice, called to mind the moment that the three had shared in the ball pit - the fencers' emphatic agreement that Marinette _looked good _with her hair down. "This day just wouldn't have been the same without you."

"She's right, Marinette," Adrien chimed in his agreement. His face was bright and ruddy, pink lips dark with the purple and blue dyes of the ice cream. "It wouldn't have been half as fun."

He extended his free arm to her with as much of a mock-bow as he could muster with Kagami at his other side, still holding firmly to him.

When Marinette used her "Ladybug Vision," it was as if time itself slowed to a standstill in an explosion of pure, creative possibility. At those moments, she could see all the pieces, understand the infinite potential of imagination and the myriad ways in which ordinary objects could be bound together to achieve extraordinary results - or, well, miraculous ones.

Time stopped again, like that day in the rain, flooding her with the rush of the _possible_, but the pieces – the pieces were obscure, blurred. And that was always the problem with "Marinette," rather than Ladybug: the pieces never seemed to fit the way that she wanted; she couldn't force them to fit the way that she expected.

She took Adrien's arm.

It was a somewhat halting and mildly frustrating stroll over to the nearby benches. The difficulty inherent in keeping pace between three people with radically different strides, given that Adrien seemed to carry all of his extra height in his legs, had them fumbling on occasion, but they made it, just the same, settling on a bench that proved slightly "cozy" for a trio of teens. They really shouldn't have fit at all, and likely wouldn't if Adrien had hit his growth spurt and transformed from sinewy teen to – Marinette swallowed thickly at the thought – powerfully-built man.

When she leaned into the model's shoulder a little more deeply than was strictly necessary to retrieve their shared treat from Kagami, who had taken a few experimental licks during their short trek to the bench, she felt the calloused fingers of the fencing prodigy trail over the back of her hand, and was struck by the sudden blossom of hot blood under her cheeks – Adrien's proximity, no doubt.

And due to the adorable whipped puppy-dog expression that crossed his face as he was passed over for his turn with the ice cream. Those bedeviling eyes and mock agonized quirk of the lips had her caught between pity and laughter as he turned the expression on her, and then Kagami, who responded by worrying her lower lip with her teeth for just a moment.

Deciding to err on the side of pity, she raised her hand towards his mouth to allow him to – take a comically large bite before she could wrest it away from him!

"Hey!" Marinette exclaimed, bringing the only-slightly-mangled treat to her chest to cradle like a wounded infant.

Beyond the teen model, Kagami doubled over in laughter, punctuated by an undignified snort that Marinette would never have thought her capable of.

The famous Agreste smile, which was likely trademarked by Gabriel's fashion house, pearly white teeth ever-so-slightly stained by a mingled black and yellow, flashed out at her. Heart palpitations would, no doubt, have recommenced had he favored her with that look only ten minutes earlier, but, now, there was something just under the superficial veneer of boyish charm that made it utterly ridiculous, rather than dreamy, particularly when he dissolved into a light giggle that transformed his grin into something genuinely playful, even as his brow pinched together in mock offence.

"Well, I had to do something," he huffed, mock-indignation and regal haughtiness a strange parody of that which his father displayed eternally, Marinette realized. Was that what Alya meant by "resting bitch face?" "Between the two of you," Adrien continued, "there wasn't going to be anything left for me."

He may have said more, but for the fact that he released a sudden yelp as Kagami elbowed him stiffly in the side, jerking into Marinette before steadying himself by grabbing hold of the park bench just behind her head.

Which meant that he had his arm half around her shoulders.

And then fully around her shoulders when he spread out and pressed his right hand to his ribs.

"That's going to bruise, you know," he groused towards Kagami.

"Don't whine, Adrien," Kagami intoned, her voice deep and monotonous. "It's unbecoming of a man of your breeding."

And, simultaneously, the three dissolved into yet another, shared bout of giggles.

Hand pressed to her mouth in a desperate attempt to hold herself back, Marinette watched, without, for the first time, any flair of pain or jealousy, as Kagami buried her face in Adrien's shoulder, muffling her laughter. Adrien, his arm tightening around the blunette, making her squeak lightly, responded without a hint of the characteristic _Agreste_ restraint and reserve, his joy clear and unrestrained.

Marinette had to admit, even if Kagami didn't believe in Andre's magic, maybe she was right: all they needed to believe in was ice cream.

* * *

Author's Notes

I admit to enjoying Miraculous Ladybug, which I watch alongside the child in my life, more than I should.

I will also admit to producing this story in one sitting, without any real attempts at editing, because the idea of Kagami stepping up to challenge Andre wouldn't leave my mind; even after ten minutes of sweet interactions between Adrien, Kagami, and Marinette, I realized that I didn't want to see them part. Apologies for any excessive sentimentally, cheesiness, errors, or dips in quality. Sometimes, you just have to get something out of your system.

After the extensive exchanges between the trio in "Love Eater," I think that I have a new appreciation for polyamorous ships. They simply fit so well together during that day, Adrien and Kagami bonding over their shared desire for freedom and Marinette, in her gentleness, easing them along in their efforts to recapture their lost childhoods. It allowed both of the repressed teens to see her in a new light, recognizing her physical and spiritual beauty, to the point that Andre's insistence that the combination of too many flavors produced nothing but disharmony and confusion simply rang false.

The entire point of their experiences that day was to assert that they could choose their own flavours, accept the ones that they were given, should they be satisfied with them, or reject them. That liberty may have been undercut in this work by the fact that Kagami selected the ice cream, but Marinette was free to walk away - to object to the way in which Kagami views her, as evidenced by the shift in perspective when she reclaimed power over the definition of the relationship. How could she object, though? Blueberry may look like a Luka flavour on its face, but the simple, homey sweetness is all Marinette.


	2. Maintaining Balance I

**Author's Notes**

Adrien and Kagami's meticulously-arranged schedules have finally aligned to allow them the chance to spend time together with their girlfriend, a certain neophyte fashion designer with a heart of gold and the cutest case of foot-in-mouth disease that either of them have ever seen.

Marinette is finally going out on a date with her new boyfriend and girlfriend.

Wait. Did anyone tell her that?

I hope that you derive some enjoyment out of the first of two chapters, and I invite you to read the original work for some context.

* * *

_I'm coming apart at the seams... _

_Oh, Lord, was that a sewing pun? _

_Chat Noir's … Chat Noir is contagious. _

As a biracial girl, Marinette Dupain-Chang had suffered from occasional, minor conflicts of identity, and, likewise, the world – and Chloe – had inflicted upon her some slights and jibes as a result of her heritage. Likely the most severe issue that she or her mother had faced in that regard was her grandfather's longstanding feud with her papa over a "bread recipe" – as obtuse a metaphor as Marinette had ever heard given that, as a Dupain, she was "of bread," a "bun in the oven," as it were.

Chat Noir would love that turn of phrase too.

Today, her two heritages, which she had always found relatively easy to reconcile, believing "citizen of Paris" to be a sufficient gestalt identity, seemed to be at war, tearing her apart like a burst seam.

Her French blood, the same blood that ran through the veins of Sartre, burned with the existential question: "Why am I here?"

Her Chinese birthright sought to push such trite introspection aside with the more extreme: "_Am_ I really here?"

Of course, in her case, these questions were of a more literal, and less metaphysical, bent.

The source of the former query was obvious: there was no reason for her to be here, seated on one of the benches in the spacious gymnasium of Monsieur Armand D'Argencour's fencing academy, watching, mouth perpetually ever-so-slightly agape, as Kagami and Adrien dueled once again. Both nimble teens were lost in an all-but incomprehensible dance of thrusts, parries, and ripostes, so well matched that it really should have hurt Marinette to watch.

Well, there _was_ a reason she was here: her _friends_ had invited her, but why?

Hence the second question: was this real life, or was it just delusional fantasy – a fever dream conjured by her mind to torture herself? Had Adrien's implicit rejection, tempered though it may have been by the ambiguous pleasure of their shared ice cream, caused her to go insane? Whatever lingering "magic" remained from the gentle exchange between the trio had surely given way to madness once they parted.

Really, with her kleptomania and catastrophizing, she had already been halfway there – not to mention the evidence provided by her bizarre applications of Tikki's "Lucky Charms." After all, what sane person used a spoon to fish for magic spandex/leather-clad cat-boys?

There could be no sound justification for being invited on a date between Kagami and Adrien, so it was entirely possible that she _wasn't_ actually here.

That made sense, right?

And it was a date, clearly. However strange it might be, the two somewhat socially-awkward teens did likely consider a rather vigorous sparring match "a date."

The pair occupying Marinette's thoughts had parted for a final time, Adrien landing a stunning, unexpected touch to Kagami's mid-section as she over-committed in an opening lunge, having, it seemed, lost herself in a bout of impetuousness. A flourished salute was shared between them before the _couple_, almost in unison, tucked their foils away and slipped off their head-gear, approaching the bench on which Marinette had settled to watch the match ... which had become a best of three, then best of five, then best of nine tournament.

After that, they had simply lost count.

Exertion had left Adrien's unblemished skin glistening with sweat, his normally pristine locks dishevelled by his mask and matted to his forehead. His chest heaved as he gulped down heavy breaths.

Fumbling in his bag for a moment after setting aside his gauntlets and helmet, he let out a throaty huff, emerging with a perspiring bottle of water and cracking the seal before tossing the cap into a nearby bin (recycling, _of course,_ because Adrien Agreste was too perfect to ever add unnecessarily to the nation's landfills, Marinette knew). Beads of sweat coalesced at his jawline and trailed across the smooth flesh of his throat as he tossed his head back, swallowing down half the bottle's contents in one long swig.

Oh, the lucky mouth of that bottle.

"So thirsty," Marinette mumbled under her breath, shaking her head at herself before releasing a muffled yelp as Adrien glanced in her direction.

"I-I mean _you're _so thirsty," she squeaked, covering her mouth with the palm of her hand, her next words coming out in a muffled mumble, "Because you've been working out."

_Which was obvious; way to go, Marinette! _

"You can have a swig, if you'd like, Marinette. There's no need to be shy." The soft smile, hearty and gentle, with which he favoured her stalled her self-deprecating spiral of negative cognition, and had her spinning her mental wheels, caught in an entirely different thought.

Kagami, who coughed to catch Marinette's attention, was, as Marinette realized when she turned to the source of the sound, in much the same state as Adrien. She rolled her shoulder, tossing her head to the side, frowning in the other girl's direction.

Had Kagami seen her staring? Was she upset – _of course _she was upset at having some interloping fan tag along so that she could drool over a boy who had already been taken.

A few minutes spent eating ice cream together on a park bench, and the liberties that Marinette had been granted with Kagami's ... boyfriend didn't change anything.

"Marinette," Kagami began, wiping her brow with a towel from her own bag, smoothing her hair back into place along her brow-line, "are you alright? You look slightly flushed."

"She's right, Marinette." A slowly-spreading look of what Marinette thought must have been queasiness seemed to darken Adrien's features as he lowered the bottle that he had proffered to her moments earlier. "If you're not feeling well, my driver can be here in a few minutes to take you home."

Before Marinette could think to reply, Kagami cut in once again. "I too could call for a car," she said with a furtive glance in Adrien's direction. "Neither of us would want you walking if you're under the weather."

And that was the answer to her existential question. Of course Adrien and Kagami alike were just trying to be sweet when they invited her to join them. It was the same reason that they asked her to share their ice cream: mingled pity and compassion. Adrien was too nice to say it, or to even be conscious of his desire for solitude with his girlfriend, but _sub_consciously he wanted her gone. Kagami, however harsh she might have been when she viewed Marinette as competition – and what a joke that was; as if she could _ever_ compete with the far more beautiful, poised, and talented Japanese girl – Kagami was magnanimous in this victory out of concern for their burgeoning friendship.

It would only be polite for her to leave.

"What? Me? - Ha. No-" That... came out more as a half screech than the coolly confident deflection that Marinette had intended.

Worry lines creased the skin around the models' eyes – and _yes_, they were both gorgeous enough to be models – as they squinted at her, Adrien setting aside his water bottle and pausing for a moment before taking a step in her direction. Kagami, on the other hand, was far more decisive, surging towards her without a hint of hesitation to press a palm to the other girl's forehead.

Towel-dried fingers, still slightly clammy, tucked under Marinette's hairline, their pressure firm and constant for a moment. Her face descended to Marinette's level, and the bluenette could have sworn that she caught sight of some calculating gleam in the other girl's eyes. Her mouth was parted slightly, releasing puffs of breath as the winded fencer recovered.

Marinette could only just hold back a spastic shudder.

_Oh, God. She does know. Of course she knows that I was staring because everyone but Adrien knows how I feel and that's only because I'm a lying coward who told him that I was only a fan who didn't have feelings for him and-_

"You don't feel as if you're running a fever," Kagami mused as she pulled away with what Marinette would have thought, had she not known better, was an intentional, if light, ghosting of fingertips across the Chinese girl's temple and cheek.

The feathery touch left in its wake hyper-sensitive skin, tingling under the blush of embarrassment that ruddied Marinette's entire face.

"You're fine – I mean I'm fine," Marinette stuttered as she cast her arms apart and waggled her hands ... for some reason, leaping to her feat. "Adrien's fine too-" _damn it, why!_ "We're all fine because why wouldn't we be?"

The heavenly chuckle that spilled forth from Adrien's mouth was almost enough to make Marinette's embarrassment worthwhile.

"I'm glad to hear that we're all fine, Marinette, though I am more than a little tired."

The blonde model strode towards both girls, a newly formed smile that was certainly, in no way, a downright swoon-worthy and utterly un-Adrien-Agreste smirk blooming across his features, but the smooth grace of his motions was undercut by a ... butt wiggle? A sashaying of the hips that must have been a combination of a trick of the light and awkward motions caused by chaffing from the bulky protective gear he wore while fencing.

"You are starting to look a bit better," Adrien observed, coming to stand next to Kagami as he reached out a hand to Marinette. "So are you ready for your turn with me?"

"My turn?" Marinette squeaked.

"Of course," Kagami supplied in an absent tone. "Why do you think that we invited you? We were going to fence."

A sense of deja vu overtook Marinette as a second hand, graceful and feminine, despite the slightly dusky callouses that dotted the proximal ridges just below each finger, was extended to her.

"But I don't know how and I don't have any equipment. I couldn't – I mean-" She could only stare at the two teens before her as she stumbled over her own thoughts.

"You needn't worry, Marinette." Kagami's tone and outstretched hand remained steady, cool, stable. "In case of emergencies, I keep another set of gear in my locker. You and I have similar body types, so we thought that you might want to use it."

"But I still don't know how," Marinette very nearly groused. It was all but unfathomable that they should be so persistent – so kind. How could Kagami be comfortable sharing her time with Adrien when it was so limited?

"Mari," -Adrien called her _Mari_; Marinette's heart almost stopped – _"_you know how well you did during your tryout. For a novice, you showed real potential, and besides, it's not about winning; it's about having fun with friends."

"Indeed, Marinette. I've softened him up for you. I'm quite certain that-" there was a half-second's pause as she cast her gaze towards Adrien before finishing her sentence, "we can handle him, between the two of us."

For some reason that escaped Marinette, Adrien seemed to choke on nothing, taking a single, stumbling step backwards in an uncharacteristic show of clumsiness. It was so utterly unlike him, occasional bouts of endearing dorkiness aside, that she could not fathom the reason. Hands fumbling about to find purchase, nearly tripping over the bench behind him, he cast his eyes, an even more vibrant and enticing green than usual now that they had blown abnormally wide, between Kagami and Marinette, jaw working as if he was trying to mouth a response.

Before she could mull over his reaction to the promise of a second fencing match, Marinette herself started upwards when her laser-eyed focus on the model was broken by the sensation of a hand closing around her own, tugging her away from the still apparently stunned Agreste heir, who was now starting blankly at the far wall, shifting in his seat as if he was sitting on a burr.

Though she had lost the most recent bout with Adrien, Kagami, for whatever reason, sported an expression that Marinette could only describe as "smug" as the fencing prodigy squeezed Marinette's fingers before dragging her away from Adrien.

_Weird_.

"Give Adrien a minute to calm down after our match. You can come with me to the women's locker room. I'll get changed and help you into my spare gear."

And, as she was dragged away by the insistent yet stoic fencer, Marinette resigned herself to the sweet torture that was to come: staring into Adrien's beatific face for an hour of fencing practice while knowing that he could never be anything more than he was at this moment – just a friend.

* * *

These three do not receive enough love, and I'm somewhat at a loss as to the relative popularity of Lukadrienette, not that I judge in any way.

Just - that ball-pit scene...

And, yes, Marinette's on the back foot here, with her anxiety at the forefront. She'll have her day in one of these one-offs.


	3. Maintaining Balance II

Marinette found herself deposited, without word or ceremony, in the girls' locker room, steam and the thin white noise of cascading water from the nearby showers wafting into the changing area from the adjoining showers. A wide array of fencing equipment – a padded suit, gauntlets, mesh mask, and assorted items that Marinette could not hope to name – lay in a regimented line along the bench beside her.

Stitch-work was clean and effective – nothing popped or strained. Fabric coloration was a uniform vibrant red, Kagami and Ladybug's colour; no sun-bleaching or weathering. Folding the suit itself onto her lap to trail a palm down the surface of the stomach and chest, Marinette met rough but even padding, free from indentations or deformations.

Marinette turned to place the thick uniform back on the bench beside her, nose wrinkling at the lingering chemical odour that wafted upwards from the suit.

Her tongue clucked against the roof of her mouth as she cast her gaze towards the locker wherein she had stored her handbag and a Kwami who was, no doubt, silently munching on a collection of oatmeal-raisin cookies, each one larger than her head, scattering crumbs throughout Marinette's purse. Tikki, for all her childish affectations, possessed a sagacity that Marinette envied. She could certainly use some of that wisdom right now, but there was no time to consult her Kwami; Kagami could reappear at any moment.

Perhaps the little demi-god would advise her to leave, though it had grown increasingly difficult to extract any meaningful advice from the Kwami these days.

Tikki, obviously failing to understand the nuances of human romantic relationships, had only giggled when Marinette had informed her earlier that week that Adrien and Kagami had invited her along on yet another one of their dates.

Despite Marinette's extensive lamentations, the little goddess had flitted about the room, humming idly to herself while ducking in and out of Marinette's potted flowers and offering exaggerated assurances that everything with Kagami and Adrien would work out "perfectly fine," which was really rather insensitive in Marinette's view. Though she wanted her friends to be happy, she had hoped that Tikki would be a little bit more sensitive to her feelings and conscious of the implications of the date and its impact on Marinette herself. Yes, Adrien and Kagami were "so cute" together – or separately – but Tikki didn't have to flit around mumbling it, occasionally staring in Marinette's direction while doing so, as if enraptured by the prospect of them being so.

For all the little goddess' attempts to offer advice when Marinette was pursuing Adrien, it seemed that Tikki just didn't understand human relationships.

Before diving into Marinette's purse, she had merely clapped her nubby hands together in excitement at the pile of cookies before her and told the young girl to "have fun on her date," without even giving Marinette the time to explain that it was far from _her_ date; she was accompanying Adrien and Kagami on _their_ date.

Tikki was, in fact, so utterly lost that she had counselled Marinette against trying to forget Adrien, frowning and flicking cookie fragments about Marintte's desk like a petulant child playing with the Brussel sprouts he refused to eat, throughout the entire phone conversation that Marinette held with Luka before their first date a few weeks earlier.

The lecture that followed, wherein a stern-faced Tikki advised Marinette to guard the secrets of the Miraculous carefully and maintain proper distance from those outside of her coterie, had been utterly unexpected.

Not that Tikki had anything to worry about, as it turned out.

She had tried to spend time with Luka, who was painfully patient, understanding and sweet, moving at her pace and giving her space at the slightest hesitation or mere suggestion of discomfort.

Their dates proved enjoyable; his presence liberated her from the tension of expectation and all of the anxieties that still plagued her when she engaged with Adrien, even now when he seemed officially "taken."

And, objectively, Luka was drop-dead gorgeous, skirting a line between refined and roguish with his deferential and considerate mannerisms and slight rebellious streak that was more the product of a poet's free-spirit than anything unsavoury that might set her papa's teeth on edge. He was no "Adrien Agreste," teen supermodel and universally-beloved heartthrob, but still...

Then, Luka had kissed her.

It wasn't that she hadn't wanted him to do it. In fact, like the gentleman that he was, he had even _asked_ if she would like him to kiss her – not if he _could_, but if she _wanted_ him to – and her answer had been an emphatic, if fumbling, yes.

To be desired by anyone, let alone a dashing older boy, was heady and thrilling, reducing her to the kind of stuttering mess she knew that she was before Adrien, and, in that moment, it had seemed possible that the musician might be able to move her in the same way as the model for whom she had pined, futilely, for months.

Her first real kiss had been everything that a girl could hope; he was sweet and gentle, ghosting his lips across hers with a tentativeness born not from inexperience – she knew better – but concern for her boundaries, a tender care that she could feel through the soft flesh pressed to her mouth. A calloused thumb smoothed over the back of her hand, held in his firm grip, rolling soothing circles around her knuckles.

He smelled of faint, tastefully applied cologne, tasted of mint from the gum that he must have sneaked in just for this moment, and his slow, measured breath played across her cheeks as he withdrew.

It was like kissing her papa.

Not that she would know what that was like, but she could assume.

Kissing Luka had been like planting one on a father, sister, or best friend.

Luka himself, however, had seemed utterly unaware of her discomforting realization, leaving her to turn into the Tom and Sabine Boulangerie with nothing more than an innocuous and somewhat smitten smile and a "Goodnight, Marinette."

Most assuredly, Marinette did not have a good night.

_Why_ was it so impossible to have non-platonic feelings for a guy other than Adrien? Chat, for all his dorky petulance, was willing to die for her. Luka adored Marinette despite her myriad flaws and failings. Nino had even confessed to crushing on her, or so she had been informed by Alya during one of their many sleepovers. Yet none of them could compete with Adrien Agreste, or hope to displace him from her affections.

Even the reality that Kagami now seemed to hold Adrien's heart couldn't convince her to give up on the boy. If Marinette truly valued the other girl as a friend, she should have been able to set aside her silly, juvenile feelings, but, no, it was impossible.

She was such a-

"-nette?"

Marinette jerked up in her seat, casting her eyes about her.

There, drying her still-dripping, tightly-cropped hair vigorously with the edge of the fluffy white towel strewn over her neck and shoulders, was Kagami herself, fresh from her shower.

Also shirtless.

A blue sports-bra concealed barely-visible curves; much like Marinette herself, Kagami was a rather slight young woman. She could not help but notice that there was a distinct contrast between the Japanese prodigy and herself, a girl whose formative years were spent sneaking pastries from her parents' bakery and enjoying meals heavy in rice, pastas, breads, and all manner of confections.

There was no denying the sight that greeted her when she stepped out of her morning shower and smoothed the steamy fog from her bathroom mirror to brush her teeth: an eternal, slight – and quite _healthy_, though try telling that to Adrien's father - paunchiness to her midsection.

Kagami, on the other hand, was _cut_...

Wiry muscles arched along her upper arms, flexing alongside the tight bundle of sinew in her shoulder as strode towards the Chinese girl. Finely-sculpted abs, rippling under soft skin, trailed downwards from her lower sternum, disappearing into the waistline of a low-riding pair of jeans. A rouge flush from the lingering heat of her shower highlighted the curves of muscle, which were still several shades lighter than the tanned flesh of her face and throat.

"Marinette," Kagami said before pulling the towel away and tossing it over her shoulders, "might you be able to assist me with something?"

"Abs..." Marinette slurred, shoulders falling slack. Something inside her purse, stowed safely in the locker behind her, squeaked just loudly enough for Marinette to make out.

"What?" The Japanese girl queried as she strode forward, slipping her towel from her shoulders and tossing it onto the end of the bench on which Marinette sat.

"Abs...Abs-so-lutely. It would- ba-absolutely be my pleasure!" Marinette squawked in a rush. "To yelp hew- help you!"

With a subtle nod of her head in Marinette's direction as if the baker hadn't just made an absolute _idiot_ of herself four times over, Kagami turned to her own locker to rummage through its contents, giving Marinette time to mull and, characteristically, catastrophize.

_What the hell was that?_

Yes, Kagami struck an impressive figure, but she was a girl. Abs like that could easily have belonged to a guy. A really ripped guy. They were almost as impressive and unexpected as the six-pack that Adrien had unveiled during on their trip to the pool, arranged, of course, by Alya in her unending quest to provide Marinette with opportunities to confess to the model.

It was hard to argue with the well-chiselled results of Gabriel Agreste's low-carb diet plan.

Or whatever diet Kagami's mother had imposed on her.

The other girl turned from her locker, giving Marinette yet another opportunity to ponder sexual dimorphism and the intricacies of abdominal muscles.

So, Marinette clearly had a thing for abs? So what? Abs were abs; it wasn't as if a person could tell a man and woman apart by their abs alone – it was basically the same thing. One set of smoothly defined, taut and rippling abs that shifted, bunched, and stretched with every arching motion of Kagami's torso, glistening with the faint, fresh residue of water left behind by her shower ...

_Damn it!_

"I'm sorry, Marinette," Kagami began as she settled onto the bench next to the other girl. The fencer turned towards the sweating and wild-eyed girl. "Did you say something?"

That was as good question: had she said something? One could only hope not.

"Me – what? Ppft- No!" Marinette choked and sputtered. At least she thought that she hadn't said anything about the alluring aroma of peppermint and rosemary that had saturated Kagami's skin after her shower.

Brow quirked, Kagami saddled slightly closer to Marinette, and the wet heat radiating off of her was nearly enough to make Marinette sweat even more than she already was.

"Then would you mind?" Kagami began before hesitating and leaning into Marinette to press the back of her palm to the centre of her back, trailing the edge of her thumb under the pronounced curve of her shoulder blade. With a grunt, she continued: " I tore a muscle and dislocated my shoulder blade about three years ago. Every so often, it seizes up, and I'm afraid that Adrien was rather hard on me today."

Staring at the smooth expanse of skin, a slightly paler colour than her face and arms, and flexing muscle that encircled Kagami's shoulder blades, Marinette nearly swallowed her own throat.

And, yes, she realized, though what she'd learned in the human anatomy unit in biology class seemed to suggest that wasn't physically possible – well, what do you know? It seemed that it was.

With a tentative gesture, Marinette motioned for Kagami to join her on the bench, an invitation which the young fencer accepted without word, throwing her leg over the seat so that she faced away from the other girl.

The smooth planes of muscle on display trailed around into the divot that traced Kagami's spine, the full expanse of skin a perfect yellow-peach hue.

That same shower-heated skin burned Marinette's fingertips with a pleasant tingle as she made hesitant contact with the flesh that curved under Kagami's shoulder blade, dimpling under the pressure of her tight sports bra.

Pressing a thumb to Kagami's mid-back, Marinette smoothed over soft ridges of bone and muscle until she hit upon a thick, bulbous lump that seemed half-buried by Kagami's shoulder blade. After shifting her position to gain proper leverage, she pressed her thumb into the spot and ran it in light swirling motions, circling in towards the centre of the knot.

"Ugh," Kagami grunted before she drew in a sharp intake of breath that sent the tingle in Marinette's fingertips arching up her body and into the base of her spine.

She- she kinda wanted to hear that again. Why did she want to hear that again?

Right. Because it was a clear sign that her ministrations were having the desired effect. Her slow, firm massage was clearing up the tension.

A curling of her fist allowed her to press the back of her knuckles into a wider area, spreading the force of her motion and allowing her to dig in with the weight of her upper body rather than the feeble pressure of her thumbs.

The throaty grunt that Kagami released almost caused Marinette to start

"Does that hurt?" she asked quickly, lessening the pressure for just a moment.

"No," Kagami breathed as she leaned into Marinette's touch, head lolling forward. "It feels good."

Another groan, lighter this time now that the worst of the tension had bled away, the hard pellet of muscle loosening to a small, soft orb under the gentle heat that had begun to build under Marinette's probing thumb. It pitched high and breathy, leaving Marinette squirming in her seat, chomping down on her lip to the point that she thought that she might remove a chunk of flesh.

Kagami's eyes fluttered open, her neck twisting slightly further to the point that Marinette could see them angling to gaze on Marinette's face, which she had schooled into an expression of studious focus.

_I didn't know that brown eyes could be ... vibrant. _

"Is something wrong?" Kagami inquired with a quirk of her head, rendered even more awkward by the angle at which she was turned.

It was then that Marinette realized that her hands were now running slow circles around Kagami's exposed back, trailing the edge of her bra, the lumpy knots of tension having been worked out completely. She jerked her hands away as if Kagami was a mass of roiling serpents.

"Hot really- I mean not really!" Marinette shrieked with a vigorous shake of her head that could not have been more violent had she caught a dozen akuma in her hair.

"Well, that's good to know," Kagami replied, swivelling on the bench so that she was facing the line of lockers before both girls. She rolled her shoulder once and sighed in contentment, eyes closed, taking in one long, deep breath.

"Much better. Thank you so much for being willing to help me, Marinette." There was an earnest bashfulness to Kagami's expression that reminded Marinette of their first painful steps towards friendship as the fencer's lack of social graces and inexperience had left them both uncertain and halting in their interactions, despite the fact that they both had the best of intentions.

Her hand fell on Marinette's knee, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"You're a very generous friend, to both Adrien and me, and-" she paused as if questing for the right words. "And you should know how much we both appreciate you."

The Japanese girl's arm, all hairless and unblemished skin, lead up to the rounded curves of her shoulder and the graceful arch of her neck, below which lay the soft, compact swell of her bosom.

"I'm sot- Not!" Marinette coughed, subduing her gaze by affixing it assiduously to the floor. It wasn't polite in the least to stare in jealousy of Kagami's more impressive physique.

"I'm not special!" she began again.

A halting and momentary glance back towards Kagami's face revealed an expression of such profound confusion and disbelief that Marinette might as well have just suggested that Adrien Agreste was Hawkmoth and had been the good guy all along.

Of course, if Adrien really was Hawkmoth...

"You really believe that, don't you?" Kagami intoned, shaking her head, her tone airy, almost that of a child learning about some new wonder. "You really believe that you're not special."

"Well, I'm not like you or Adrien – not a master fencer, or model, or journalist, or heiress, or amazing DJ, or-"

"Marinette!" Kagami exclaimed, tightening her grip on Marinette's lower thigh, the pressure causing her legs to tense in that pleasant, staticky way that she knew so well from all of the many hours spent staring at her wall of Adrien Agreste photographs. "You're being ridiculous. You're one of the kindest, sweetest people that I've ever seen. Being a fencer or a model doesn't compare to that."

"Do-do you really think so?" Marinette asked, slow and soft.

"Marinette, you were my first friend, and you were Adrien's first friend- other than Chloe, and we both know that doesn't count. And, more than that, you were the best example of a friend that either of us could have asked for," Kagami said with a dull earnestness, as if it was patently obvious and weighty at once.

Her lithe arms curled around Marinette and drew her into a momentary hug that allowed the neophyte fashion designer to appreciate the easy strength of Kagami's body, drawing her tight against the other girl's firm form. As Marinette mouthed out silent words, jaw flopping, fortunately outside of Kagami's range of vision, she was squeezed just slightly too tight, crushing the air from her, before her friend released her.

"Now, shall we rejoin Adrien?" Kagami asked abruptly as she veritably leapt to her feet and busied herself with digging about in her locker, face turned away.

Marinette could only slap her mouth closed into a twisted smile and nod – not that Kagami could see it as she pulled a blouse from her locker and slipped into it.

It took some time for Kagami to prepare herself; unruly fingers seemed to have inordinate difficulty with the buttons to her blouse.

When she did finally return to Marinette's side, she was able to help the slightly smaller girl through the process of donning her fencing equipment, illustrating the way in which each strap and tie was to be affixed and describing the function of each piece in exacting detail, instructions growing progressively more cool and detached as she worked her way through the paraphernalia as if she had prepared her lecture beforehand.

Adrien only smiled and nodded in their direction when they emerged and joined him in the centre of the fencing area that remained unoccupied.

Over the course of their session, surprisingly gentle hands guided her through precise motions. Now that she was back in her element, Kagami seemed cool and laser-focused once again, at least externally, and though Marinette appreciated the softness of her motions, she was still a little bit ... forceful in her exhortations.

Still, Kagami's blunt, forthright appraisals and commands were counterbalanced by Adrien's smooth encouragements and soft smiles whenever he lifted the mesh mask of his fencing garb.

It was a pleasure to know that she was giving him a good workout. Each time they paused so that Kagami could step towards Marinette in order to re-position her arm or place a firm hand on her hip to adjust her stance, the heated flush of exertion was evident on his face.

All too quickly, however, the delirious and giddy dance shared between the three came to a close, the fencers' cell-phones, tucked away in their gym bags, signalling that they had just enough time to shower and change before their respective drivers came to retrieve them.

Kagami retired to the nearby benches to flip through something on her cell-phone, studying it with careful intent, and though Marinette expressed interest, she was shooed off into the locker room in order to clean off the sweat that had accumulated from her relatively hardy exercise.

Really, her adventures as Ladybug had left her with strength, dexterity, and stamina far in excess of most girls her age this side of Olympic athletes in-training like Kagami, and the short, halting bouts with Adrien hadn't been too taxing.

It was entirely nervous sweat, collecting steadily each moment that she stood next to Adrien and Kagami, fearing that she might let slip her feelings for the model, ruining her friendship with both him and his girlfriend.

It has been nothing less than sweet torture.

A somewhat indulgent steamy shower addressed the physical problem, but even the extended opportunity to mull over her situation offered her no solutions to the emotional one. She loved Adrien just as much as she ever had, and nothing seemed poised to change that.

And, when she emerged, purse slung over her shoulder, the boy himself stood there next to his girlfriend, gleaming and fresh-faced, hair wild and slightly moist in a style that mimicked that of Chat Noir.

Adrien must have been a fan.

He smelled of a rich, heady blend of green vetiver with just a hint of refreshing citrus to cut the heavier notes.

Marinette may have walked next to him on their way of the building and leaned in – _in an entirely clandestine and in no way spastic and clumsy fashion _– to catch a more extensive whiff, just to pick out all the details.

_Adrien: the Fragrance_ had nothing on whatever it was that he was wearing.

Probably because _he_ was wearing it.

Together, they strolled out the entryway to the D'Argencour's fencing academy, ambling down the steps that led out to the sidewalk. Adrien's driver had already arrived, standing, broad shoulders caught in their perpetual slouch or hump that made him appear even more boxy and robust, before the Agrestes' car.

A paired beckoning of Adrien with a finger and a quick tap to his watch was followed by his turning to open the door to the back seat.

An inexplicable sensation of disappointment welled up in Marinette's chest, causing her to glance off into the distance, away from the vehicle's cavernous interior. It wasn't in any way clear what, exactly, she had been expecting.

There was little time for her to contemplate the sensation, or the flutter of excitement that warred with it, as she watched Adrien turn to Kagami, the couple spending several seconds making doe-eyes at each other as Adrien took her hand into his own and stroked it gently. A soft word passed between them, but Marinette, having taken a few steps to the side to give them a polite amount of space, was unable to pick out anything specific.

The boy leaned in, his slow motion emphasizing the pronounced difference in their heights now that he had begun to grow into his adult body, pressing a lingering kiss to Kagami's cheek that had her reserved facade break into a full and dazzling smile, made all the more precious for its rarity.

They truly did deserve each other, and Marinette could only hope, as she stood off to the side, that they both appreciated how special the other was. Of course she couldn't compare to Kagami, but that was, as she had resolved, alright. They were both happy.

With a quiet farewell and a final squeeze of Kagami's hand, Adrien turned from his girlfriend. Expecting a simple salutation from the blonde as he departed, Marinette began to tremble as he turned not towards his car, but in her direction, coming to stand before her.

"Thank you for agreeing to come with us," he said, gazing at her in a fashion that was so similar to the way that he looked at Kagami that it left Marinette sputtering incoherently.

The uncertain noises were cut off, as, it felt, was the beating of her heart, when he surged forward to press his lips to her cheek, lingering there for a timeless moment before withdrawing. In that span, there was nothing but the soft, tingling brush of his breath, the pristine alabaster of his skin that she took in with wide eyes, and the scent of his cologne, earthy and woodsy, making her think of the long-closed barbershop that her father had taken her into when she was a child and he needed a trim.

He withdrew, and Marinette's heart slammed into its highest gear as it struggled to make up for a seeming eternity of disuse.

"I really had a great time," slow and halting, though Marinette hadn't the presence of mind to react in any way _after being kissed by her crush_, he pressed a hand to her cheek and swirled his thumb over the spot _he had just graced with his lips!_

And there was a grin, opening up his features with a boyish earnestness that Marinette had only ever seen on small children and Chat Noir, with which he favoured both Marinette and Kagami in turn.

Marinette _meeped_ and fidgeted.

"With _both_ of you, Mari," he affirmed, smile still firmly in place, before he swivelled around to jog towards his waiting driver and luxury automobile.

"See you in class, Mari," he exclaimed, exuberance washing over what seemed to be an attempt at maintaining a controlled tone as Natalie stared at him from the back seat, jerking only slightly after an errant toss saw Adrien's bag land nearly in her lap.

"Kagami," he continued, seemingly unaware that Natalie was fussing over his gym bag, rearranging it. "I'll text you tonight. Let me know, okay?"

Anything else that he might have had to say was swiftly cut off by his bodyguard's thick form and the slam of a car door.

The imposing man glanced over in Marinette's direction, nearly causing her to wither before she jerked back at the sensation of a firm hand falling on her shoulder.

Kagami stood next to her, chin upraised. Her back was rigid, and her grip comforting, though slight shudders caused the growing, inconsistent pressure on Marinette's shoulder to wax and wane as seconds ticked by without action or reaction from either her or the robust chauffeur.

Adrien's "Gorilla" merely stated back for a moment that dragged on, until he broke the strange contest by nodding and lumbered around to the other side of the vehicle.

Before ducking inside, he caught Marinette's eye, his hand resting atop the roof of the car, gripping the rim of the door. His dark blue eyes were devoid of any discernible emotion, and sweat pooled along Marinette's brow as she was, again, on the verge of swallowing her own throat for a very different reason.

For just a moment, his thumb flashed up and down. Then he was inside the vehicle and merging into traffic as the car departed.

"You know, Marinette-"

"Bwa!" Marinette screeched, leaping away from the girl at her side and tearing her shoulder from what had been a comforting grip, forgotten entirely. She froze in place, stuck standing on one foot with the other raised nearly to her knee, her hands before her as if warding off an attack.

"You're okay, Marinette." Kagami merely smiled, raised a hand to placate her, and continued. "When we went on our double date to the ice rink, I thought that you were the girl that Adrien was talking about."

"Uh-buh... whu?"

Yes. That was very effective. Well said, Marinette.

Kagami's car pulled up along the sidewalk behind Adrien's departing vehicle. The girl shaded her eyes from the mid-day sun, gaze flicking towards Marinette and away. Once. Twice. And she spoke.

"It was so obvious how he felt about you that I thought that he had confessed, and you turned him down." She hissed slightly, rearranging the strap of her gym bag up along her shoulder. "Then, you strung both him and Luka along, unable to make up your mind."

Her black sedan had stopped at the curb, a thinly-built Asian man with an impeccably immaculate _Gabriel_ suit from the latest collection, dark-green-nearly-black, emerging from the vehicle to open the rear passenger side door.

"What? I never-" Marinette began before halting at the other girl's _impossible_ affirmation of Adrien's interest, which was, as it turned out, for the best, as Kagami was far from done.

"I told him," Kagami said, "that he should switch targets, as one might in fencing when unable to overcome an opponent."

She wheeled towards Marinette, allowing her bag to drop to the ground. The valet fell upon it practically before it had time to collect dirt from the sidewalk and turned to stow it away in the rear of his car.

Resolute and stern-faced, Kagami pressed into Marinette's personal space, so close that the slightly smaller girl – who now felt positively diminutive in compare – could sense the radiating heat of her body as well as her focused gaze.

Her eyes were infinitely deep like Adrien's on that day in the rain when she had been able to look into his heart – to recognize the sensitive, needy child who wanted nothing more in that moment than to experience the simple intimacy of friendship, denied to him his entire life.

Marinette didn't see a desire for the simple intimacy of friendship in Kagami's eyes.

Two lighting fast motions, punctuated and precise like a carefully-timed faint and thrust of a rapier, followed before Marinette could process the movements or react, even instinctively.

The fencer glanced over Marinette's shoulder towards the valet, fumbling for just a moment to fit her bag into the trunk of their vehicle and metaphorically juggling the spare tire, a socket wrench kit, some window washer fluid, and a medical kit in order to make room.

Then, Kagami darted forward, ducking around Marinette's nonexistent defences to plant a surprisingly soft kiss on the other girl's cheek, the one not graced by Adrien himself.

Her lips were cracked and dry – she needed chapstick – and the brush was feathery and almost tentative for a single, lingering moment during which a thick warmth bubbled up inside Marinette's belly and she sucked down a sudden breath.

Pulling back and moving to a respectable distance, though all the practised decorum in the world couldn't completely obliterate her earnest smile, Kagami nodded.

"I was wrong about a great many things," she said with a slow shake of her head and a creeping, abashed flush. "For instance, life isn't a fencing match."

"W-what?" Marinette stuttered in reply, mouth slack and flapping slighting, out of her control. Did Kagami happen to connect everything to fencing the way that Chat Noir did with cat puns? At least she varied it up with a myriad of baking references and allusions to sewing.

Which was really not the point. Was Kagami bi? Lesbian and only just realizing it? That innocuous kiss, the sensation of which lingered on Marinette's tingling cheek, resonated with feelings that were far less platonic.

_Oh, God! Did I just steal Adrien's girlfriend?But she's way too pretty to be interested in me, and I love Adrien, and I don't like girls - not that I'm bigoted! Does that make me bigoted because it was always Adrien for me and I've only ever looked at one other guy aside from that silly crush on Jagged when I was twelve and he was way too old for me, so I just never thought of another girl that way and- _

"In fencing, you can only aim for one target at a time," Kagami interrupted. There was a thin waver in her voice as she turned. The soft light from the sun slung low in the sky, reaching its nadir and disappearing below the line of buildings, caused her skin to glow warmly.

Identification of the broad delineations between various athletic competitions and their suitability as metaphors for life did not seem particularly relevant to Marinette at this moment.

"And fencing is all about individual performance." Kagami straightened with something akin to pride before relaxing her stance. "But I've come to realize that life – life can be a team sport."

A deferential nod towards Marinette, and a further softening of her voice set that thick, pooling heat in Marinette's belly churning and the most delightful way.

"If _you_ want it to be," she finished in a whisper, eyes again turning to her valet for a moment, before she leaned forward to grace Marinette's bicep with a single respectful tap.

"I-I don't understand," Marinette began. Unfathomable possibilities swirled, taunting her with alternatives that she had suppressed, convincing herself that they were irrational fantasies. They blurred and mingled with those that she had never considered – never realized.

"I told you, Marinette," Kagami said with an affirming nod. "When I want something, I don't hesitate."

With that, a practised stoic expression darkened Kagami's features once more, dropping into place like a shutter, as she turned to her waiting valet who was just now closing the trunk to their vehicle before moving to the rear passenger-side door, gazing on them with indifference. On reaching the door, which her driver, stiff and proper, opened for her, the girl paused.

"Thank you for judging my fencing match with Adrien, Marinette," Kagami said, her tone cool and distant.

There was a slight quirk to her valet's lip as Kagami settled inside the vehicle

While the chauffeur made his way around the front of the car, pausing to allow traffic to pass him by before entering the driver's door, the tinted passenger side window rolled downwards.

"We greatly appreciate your assistance in this matter," Kagami intoned over the window's lip, "and would be grateful if you could observe our next match as well."

And then, after a quick glance towards the front compartment of the car, presumably directed at the driver, settling into place as the car grumbled to life, she favoured Marinette with a wink and the most fetchingly awkward smile that the girl had seen since that rainy day when Adrien had offered her his umbrella.

At that, the car pulled out into Parisian traffic, leaving Marinette to stare after it, mute and stock still, watching as it swerved around the corner at the end of the block.

Welling up underneath the numb shock, was that giggly feeling that she shared with Alya whenever they used to fantasize about and plot out wedding days and kids and grandiose shows of affection, professions of love from Adrien, and first _real_ kisses.

_Oh..._

"Crap."

Somewhere in her purse, swimming in cookie crumbs, stomach distended, a tiny goddess of creation laughed.


	4. The Waiting Is the Hardest Part I

**Summary:** After two "dates," Kagami and Adrien have made clear their intentions towards one-another and Marinette. Now, there's nothing left to do but wait for her to make her decision, but the waiting, as they say, is the hardest part, and Adrien doesn't really do "patient."

* * *

Adrien's jaw twitched lightly, eager, perfectly smooth model hands playing with the straps of his gym bag. Even now as he sat in the back seat of his father's car before the Agreste estate, his lips still sparked with the memory of Marinette's soft cheek and warmth still trailed like impossibly languid electricity through his limbs at Kagami's expectant smile.

There had been so much hope there. It had rung out in her voice, crystalline and clear, each time they discussed Kagami's plan for their "date," his intestines twisting around themselves in serpentine coils of mingled giddiness and apprehension.

"Are you listening, Adrien?" Nathalie poked her glasses into place with a forefinger, long creases spider-webbing out around her eyes as her lips folded into a thin, prim line. The tablet from which she had begun to read during the ride home from his "date" with Kagami and Marinette now lay by her side.

Yes and no.

Adrien settled his gym bag in his lap.

Extensive practice permitted him to let his mind to wander when listening to Nathalie, providing some escape from her typical drone. He had the ability to compartmentalize.

"Dinner at 18:00," he began, rifling through the nearly subconscious mental catalogue. The bag under his fingertips rumpled further with an increasingly-tight squeeze.

"I have an hour of piano practice, an hour to review my Chinese vocabulary and verb forms, and an hour for homework before a 21:00 bedtime because father wants to have breakfast at 6:00AM promptly."

Adrien was under no illusions regarding the odds of his father actually making it to that scheduled meeting.

For a man as obsessed with precision and punctuality, going so far as to cancel models' contracts if they were mere minutes late to photo-shoots or release designers who had failed to meet his exacting standards by their deadlines, regardless of any legitimate explanations involving family crises or supply chain issues over which they had no control, Gabriel Agreste never cared about his responsibilities or others' time.

"The photo-shoot that was scheduled for the twelfth has been pushed to the nineteenth due to the weather forecast," Adrien droned right back at her. "So we'll be prepping on the seventeenth with a new hair cut."

Natalie cleared her throat and turned to review her tablet once again.

After a moment, she spoke, "Quite right, Adrien. Your attention is appreciated. You may go."

Adrien needed nothing more than that as he burst from the automobile and hurdled the steps that led to the front door of the Agreste mansion.

No doubt both his father and Nathalie, had she not been left in the car, her eyebrow raised coolly at his exuberance, would have been appalled at his emotionalism.

And he couldn't bring himself to care.

The car ride had been torture; every hyper-sensitive nerve and sinew in his body tingled and ached with what had quickly become a _need_ to message Kagami.

She had wanted to speak to Marinette alone, much as Adrien had protested in light of the fact that they needed to have a conversation together if they had any hope of, well, being together, but Kagami had insisted that she and Marinette had to address matters without him before they did so.

_Kagami_ had helped him realize that Marinette – sweet, clumsy, caring Marinette – had wormed her way into his heart in a way that was soft and gentle and warm and brilliant and unassuming just like her. _Kagami_ had been bold enough to suggest that they both contemplate a "non-standard" relationship – once she had told him what that actually _was_ and they had both built on her already-extensive research into the matter.

It only seemed fair that he let her have her way.

And Adrien, as Plagg reminded him at every opportunity, was well and truly _whipped_ by whatever girl caught his fancy, from Ladybug to Kagami to "Ryuuko" to Marinette.

It was a good thing that all of the girls that he fell for would never dream of taking advantage of it for anything other than gentle ribbing.

They were all too good for it.

And for him.

Adrien skidded to a stop inside of his room, throwing his bag down at the side of the door. His hand rose to the back of his neck, which he squeezed almost to the point of pain.

Was that his father talking?

Sometimes, it became difficult for him to tell when his thoughts took on the tenor and cast of Gabriel Agreste's derisive complaints regarding his hair, his posture, his manners, and his fencing stance – not that the man had ever seen Adrien compete in person; he had his 1080p tablet camera and that was enough to dismiss and deride.

That was the most terrifying thing: to not know if your thoughts were your own, or if you were hearing someone else's voice, thinking your thoughts for you.

Adrien had to imagine that it wasn't all that different from falling prey to an Akuma, hearing Hawkmoth whisper and warp and twist.

Anticipation turned his fingers into a fumbling mess as he dove into his bag to retrieve his phone, ignoring the pitch-black Kwami that was happily buried inside the folds of his sweat-soaked gym equipment and fencing gear, huffing deeply as if he was trying to hyperventilate.

"Gross, Plagg," he muttered as he withdrew his cell phone and swiped in his pattern code in one fluid motion. The notification screen indicated that his professional email address had received two messages from Natalie, but no texts had arrived from either Marinette or Kagami. He deflated slightly.

"You just don't appreciate the finer things in life, Kid," Plagg drawled as he rose from his happy little haven of stench inside the bag.

Adrien scowled as he took a whiff and realized that some of the odour had transferred to the hand that had retrieved his cell phone.

"You're disgusting, you know that?"

"Well, good thing I don't need it anymore, so you're welcome to your sweaty bag." The Kwami flitted off towards the mini refrigerator tucked into the corner of the room. A tiny paw rose to tap at its chrome surface. "Cheese me."

And "cheese him" Adrien did, allowing the Kwami to lug a quarter wheel of Camembert cheese into the corner of the room. Once there, he began muttering what Adrien believed, if he strained his still slightly-enhanced hearing, were a string of sweet-nothings and promises to "be gentle," laying his tiny form over the massive wedge and reaching out to the uttermost, stroking the edges of its bloomy rind.

...Adrien really didn't need to see any more of that.

Instead, after retreating to his bathroom to wash his hands, he flopped over to his bed, staring at the distant, immaculately white ceiling.

Normally, he would have gone to his computer, eager to review Ladybug videos or check Alya's Ladyblog for new updates, speculations, or fan-theories that were often as inventive and amusing as they were abjectly incorrect. In recent weeks, though, the Ladyblog had lost some of its lustre. The realization that its chief journalist would post an interview with Lila and embrace her assertions as fact threw everything that it had ever produced into question.

And, if he had to admit it to himself, Ladybug just wasn't able to enthrall him as she once did. Oh, she was brilliant and beautiful, sharp and kind, indulgent without putting up with his crap, but...

Kagami peered out at him through the tight mesh-work of her fencing cage. That wicked, triumphant smirk that she allowed herself to reveal behind a mask or when in private with him and now, he realized, with Mari, grew even wider as she ducked around one of his thrusts and caught him in the belly with the tip of her epee because she was so much better at fighting in close than him.

Marinette stuttered and stumbled as he leaned into her space to ask her about the myriad pictures of him that lined her bedroom walls. Her squeaky little voice and paralyzed, mousy form called to some feline instinct that had him caught in stupefied indecision between protectiveness and predatory hunger that urged him to tease her. That feeling of warmth when their fingers brushed as she handed him her – now his – lucky charm; the same one that was now nestled in his pocket. The mingled awe as she kicked his butt at Mecha Strike during their tournament preparations. The graceful curve of her neck, framed by her loosed hair.

The sound of both girls' laughter, joining with his, as they teased each other while enjoying the ice-cream they shared _together_ because Kagami hadn't hesitated.

That was how you thought about "just a friend," right?

_Dolt_.

Which was exactly what Kagami had called him when they discussed his relationship with Marinette.

He shifted over to his side with a disgusted grunt. The fluffy billows of his comforter met his nose, tickling his nostrils. A further groan was swallowed up by his mattress.

This was hell.

And not just because Plagg was in the corner, alternating between stuffing wads of stinky cheese down his gullet and, from the sound of things, making out with whatever remained.

Deciding that the least that he could do was beat his figurative head against some Mandarin homework, he sloughed off his bed and strode over to his computer. Settling in front of his massive and no-doubt exorbitantly expensive PC did offer one major benefit: though his stomach still churned at the wretched odour of Camembert, he could slip on his equally high-quality headphones to block out Plagg's ... moans?

Man lived by small mercies.

It proved difficult for him to make any headway on his Mandarin verb conjugations. His mind kept drifting away from agreement issues to fixate on Marinette and the fluttery sensation in his heart and belly that had nothing to do with Plagg's dinner.

Kagami left him in that state for only a few frustrated minutes. Just as he was about to smack his face into his desk in frustration at the delay and his inability to even _try_ to get work done, the messenger icon on his desktop lit up. In a heated fumble, he tossed his stylus away with a little too much force. It sailed into the corner of his room, forgotten, as he pulled up his video chat program.

The window opened to reveal the spartan backdrop of Kagami's room, personalized with nothing more than a few fencing trophies, at least insofar as he could see. Taking up most of the screen was the girl herself, repositioning herself in her computer chair. A faint quirk to her lips had that omnipresent tingling ramping up to a hum, which was reminiscent of what he imagined getting slightly, well, "buzzed" on alcohol would actually feel like.

Marinette might have said yes! If she did, then he might finally be able to core out that little pit of guilt that he tried to ignore, because he felt something for someone other than his girlfriend.

"How did it go?" he exclaimed without preamble, hands worrying together just below his webcam's field of view, eyes blown open and wide. He must have been coming across like an impetuous child, which was kind of what he was sometimes, really. "What did she say?"

"You appear slightly eager, Adrien," Kagami said with a teasing glint in her eye that was only somewhat reminiscent of Ladybug – not that Adrien was comparing them directly; it was simply clear that he had a "type." From off-screen, she raised a steaming china cup into view of the camera. "Perhaps you should have a soothing cup of tea in order to settle down before we speak."

"Kagami," Adrien drew out the word in a whine. "You can't expect me not to be curious after you insisted on speaking with Mari alone."

"Ah, yes. I meant to talk to you regarding that." Fingers steepled in front of her face as she glowered at the camera in a way that had him grinning despite himself. It was like ... like he was Chat Noir and he could _be_ teased. "Calling her 'Mari.' Should I be feeling jealous?"

"I think that I'm the one who should be jealous, 'Gami. You got to spend twice as much time with her today than I did, after all."

"Well, hopefully we'll not have cause to be jealous of each other in the future."

"Because?" he pressed.

All the teasing half-flirtatiousness bled out of her as she deflated. "I'm sorry, Adrien. The truth is that I was unable to extract her opinion on the matter. She knows how we feel and perhaps it was cowardly, but I left it at that."

Frustrating though that might have been, he couldn't fault her for giving Marinette the space that she needed to think about her own sexuality. In a way, it was better than he feared; worse than he hoped. If Kagami had spoken to her about their feelings, that meant that she felt that there was a chance.

"That wasn't the wrong choice," Adrien tried to placate his actual girlfriend regarding ... their potential girlfriend. Wow. Still a weird thought. "She deserves to have time to think about this. I certainly needed it."

"Yes," Kagami hummed from the other side of the city. "It did take you some time to pick your jaw up off the floor."

"Speaking of which, one of these days." He smirked and pitched his voice lower into as close to a seductive purr as he could manage, which, given the deep reverberation inside his chest he thought was quite impressive indeed. "I'm going to get you back for that 'between the two of us' comment'."

"Do you really think it wise to complete with me in yet another arena?" Leaning back in her chair she huffed derisively. "I would think that you would do well to simply accept the loss."

"Would you be dating me if I was the type of guy who'd just take the loss?"

"No, I suppose not. Beating you is half the fun of our relationship."

"And losing to me is the other half?" Adrien added with a smirk, pressing close to the screen.

That fierce little competitive gleam in her eyes as she straightened up in her chair attested to at least one of the things that had made him fall in love with her. Kind though she could be at times, she was fire to Marinette's soothing gentleness.

"If that's what you need to tell yourself, Agreste-dono."

"Do-" He paused to mull over the question and worry his hands together, a strange gummy feeling in his mouth tangling up the question because he both needed, and feared, to hear the answer. "Do you think that she'll say yes?"

"She clearly has feelings for you, and... she seemed attracted to me, as I thought."

"Well, that's good, I guess."

"But, Adrien," she began hesitantly, and that was like a blow to Adrien's heart because she should never be hesitant. It wasn't _her_. "It is possible that she may only be interested in _you_ now that you've finally figured out that you like her."

"Maybe, but we're a package deal, right?" he asked, suddenly uncertain about that and what Kagami might be implying. "That's what we decided."

"Decisions can change, Adrien. We choose how we want to be." A scoffing laugh covered a sideways glace away from the screen. She was deflecting; skirting something and that bubbling tingling feeling suddenly amplified until his heart felt like it was hooked to a TENS therapy unit that had been turned up too high. "It almost feels like I'm the third wheel here. You both are so utterly oblivious that it seems that you were made for one-another."

There it was. Underneath the smirk and the flippancy and even the genuine anxiety that she strove so hard to conceal even from him regarding Marinette's potential response.

"Kagami," he began and leaned into the camera, double-checking his appearance in the video feed at the top right-hand corner of his screen to make certain that he was still in the frame while giving Kagami the best possible view of his eyes. "You're not. I chose to be with you; not Marinette. I won't deny how I feel about her, but whatever she decides, I _chose_ you."

"I should hope that we're passed the denial stage, at least," she scoffed. "How long did I have to beat you over the head with it for you to figure it out?"

"I lost consciousness after the first hour," Adrien granted with a deferential nod, "but you're deflecting."

"Oh? You think that you know me so well, do you?"

"I know a thing or two about how you parry, yes," he added with a wink to goad her.

It was actually painful to watch Kagami worrying her hands along the cooling cup of tea as she seemed to mull over her reply. A quick riposte and counter was expected; not this descent into lingering silence.

"Did you really choose me?" she finally blurted out in a rush, eyes flashing up towards the screen to look at him and then getting stuck, it seemed, in his eyes. "You didn't really _make_ a choice, as you were unaware that you even had one when you agreed to go out with me."

"Hey, come on. I should be asking you that. It's more likely that the two of you are going to run off together without me. I mean, who _wouldn't _pick you over me?"

Kagami glanced upwards, brow pinching together. The hand holding her small china cup, steam licking upwards from the rim, entered into the frame once again. She brought it to her lips and took a long, drawn-out sip before setting it down again.

"We're a horrible mess, aren't we?"

"What?"

"Because we are both thinking exactly the same thing," she explained. "Even though we both talked about this beforehand, neither of us really believes that it will work. After all, why would she really want '_me_'?"

True, and characteristically blunt in a way that Adrien could never allow himself to be. He shifted in his chair. Ladybug merchandise stared at him from the corner of the room, the small shelving unit packed with masks, photos, a limited edition Ladybug action figure and other flotsam having diminished as he packed away some of his collection – some of his hopes.

But that was okay. New hopes could replace them.

"I don't think that's entirely true."

"Oh?" She inquired with mock flippancy, returning to her tea in a surprisingly dainty motion.

"No." Adrien propped his elbows on the desk in front of his keyboard and rested his chin in both of his hands, hoping that his expression conveyed the sincerity that he felt, untarnished by any affectations that he had picked up from his career as a model.

"You're a _beautiful_ mess, Kagami, and I love you," he finished softly.

Kagami choked on another mouthful of tea, whether from shock or muffled laughter, he could not tell. The cup in her hands wobbled, the hot liquid nearly sloshing out over her entire workspace. As she coughed to clear her airway, she set the cup down beside her once again.

"T-that was a very effective flirt," she said between attempts to clear her throat.

_Got her_. It had the benefit of being true, of course. Oh, it was perfect when he got in that little precise strike when she least expected it because she, like him, wasn't told often enough that she was loved.

"Well, you'll just have to get used to it because I'm not going to stop any time soon." His shoulders rolled in a shrug which, hopefully, was not reminiscent of a cat arching his back. A keen eye and cleverness rumble him if ever she spent time with Chat Noir. "Whatever Marinette decides."

Something like... honest shame darkened her eyes – eyes that she couldn't even seem to raise to meet his.

"I... am afraid, Adrien," she said with a wince.

"I know," Adrien granted, folding his hands and sagging. "So am I."

"I don't think..."

"You don't think that you should be."

Her entire body, which had been falling limp, jerked upwards, her eyes fixating on him and face contorting into an expression of unbridled shock. That look persisted for several long, distinctly uncomfortable moments that had Adrien clenching and unclenching his fists under his desk.

"No," she said at last. "I shouldn't be afraid that she won't feel the same way. Not like this."

"And you shouldn't be afraid because you just _shouldn't_ be afraid."

"No," she granted uncertainly, looking off at something in the distance – the wall, he knew from having visited her room, against which her many trophies sat in a display case. "It's not... _right_ for me to be afraid of anything."

"You know, my father – he lost control. Life took my- my mother" he cleared his throat lightly and turned away from the screen for a moment to stare and his Kwami. Plagg now slept curled up on Adrien's pillow, his little legs and paws twitching in a dream. Great. Now his pillow and hair would reek of Camembert. For whatever reason, his resentment was halfhearted at best.

"And because he couldn't control that, something... went wrong, and he started to feel like he had to control everything and everyone. If he stopped even for a moment then... I don't know."

"Adrien..."

"What I'm saying, Kagami," he interrupted in a rush because he simply had to get it out; both of them had let it go unspoken, unacknowledged for far too long. "Is that my father is more afraid than anyone I know. That's why he tells me that I can't be. He _feels_ more than anyone I know, and that's why he tells me that I can't... I don't know if that makes any sense."

When it came to their parents, he was certain that they both "knew" it, but actually _knowing_ it was a completely different thing.

On the other side of the city, and his computer screen, Kagami ducked down out of the visual range of the camera for a moment. There was a slight shuffling and scraping as Adrien waited for her, squeezing his blunted, manicured nails into his palm, and wishing that he could peer into that room and her mind alike – to know what she was doing and what she was thinking.

Kagami emerged, having addressed whatever it was that had consumed her attention, though she still had that glassy faraway look in her eyes.

Adrien was a sweet boy; he had thought himself an "adventurer" while exploring his home as a child, but the truth was that he had always been soft, running back to his mother whenever the shadows loomed too ominously. Gentle deference was both his natural inclination and a survival mechanism in these recent years.

Looking into his girlfriend's watery eyes, he'd never wanted to hurt someone so badly as he did Tomoe Tsurugi at that moment.

"A great deal, really," she muttered hoarsely as if ashamed.

"I- I don't want to be ashamed of how I feel any more. So, let's be a mess together, and if Marinette wants to be a part of that – however we figure all this out – that's her choice."

"Agreste-dono," Kagami began, fingers to her jawline, stroking in mock pensiveness because she was trying to deflect again, if Adrien knew anything about her attempts to 'parry,' this time away from the embarrassment that was still plain due to her light flush, "when did you get so wise?"

"I'm studying under an ancient deity," he offered flippantly.

"My compliments to him, then. He is clearly a noble and honoured sensei."

There was precious little for them to say after that point, and though Kagami made a little jibe about not minding her if he wanted to slip into something more comfortable that had her grinning at Adrien's resulting blush because ... because he knew that she couldn't be serious, she let him go without much complaint.

Yet he just couldn't get comfy or do anything productive, try as he might. Finally, he gave up and flopped onto his bed, tossing himself into different positions and rearranging and beating his pillows. His current predicament had nothing to do with the lingering slight ... discomfort at Kagami's teasing.

Curiosity itched under his skin like little flaming ants crawling around on his arms, legs, and heart. It was as if he'd been dumped in pigeon feathers, and he scraped his head across the all-too-soft fabric of his comforter in an effort to get out the stinging, longing feeling. He could really go for a good head-scratch, something that Plagg had assured him was _not_ a consequence of his miraculous but his upbringing at the hands of, well, something that Adrien didn't feel capable of repeating, in part because there were swear words from languages that he didn't think existed any longer.

He was touch-starved.

But there was no relief to be had.

All that he could do was wait for Marinette to make up her mind – to think through her feelings and strive to be as patient with her as Kagami had been with him.

Adrien was terrible at being patient.

The incessant scratching moved up to his head as he tried to soothe the itchiness, but digging his fingernails into his scalp only made it worse.

"Ugh!" he spat into his pillow.

Why was there nothing that he could do? This was just beneath him! He was a super-hero for crying... out... loud.

But that was the thing, wasn't it?

Scooting to the edge of the bed, he gazed over at Plagg, taking in the sight of his contented Kwami, rubbing his belly and flicking his tongue out to wet his paw so that he could lave it over a twitching ear.

"Plagg?"

The little Kwami just rolled his eyes and then went back to transferring the stink of Camembert from his foul mouth – in more ways than one – to the top of his head, which was probably what he was trying to do anyways.

Fine.

"Claws Out!"

With a screech and a flail, Plagg tumbled through the air, body contracting into something akin to a streak of black energy as he was dragged into Adrien's gleaming sliver ring that metamorphosed into the distinctive ebony band, capped with a toxic green paw print, that adorned the finger of Chat Noir, the eminently suave and gentlemanly Parisian super-hero.

There was an hour until dinner, which was more than enough time for his purposes.

Adrien Agreste may not have been able treat this itch, but Chat Noir could find a fit balm for his condition. After all, Chat knew of Marinette's once-unrequited crush.

It was time for him to check up on the girl who had offered him a kind ear after Ladybug had "stood him up."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** This story will continue, and, after I have finished a different work on another site in roughly a month, the chapters should flow quite regularly.


	5. The Waiting Is the Hardest Part II

**Summary:** Chat meets with Marinette to discuss her reactions and, through some of his characteristic silliness and flirting, she struggle to come to terms with the fact that she ... finds another girl attractive.

* * *

While Chat Noir would have liked to assert that he moved like a liquid shadow even in the late afternoon light, the reality, as would be obvious to anyone watching him as he passed, was that he flopped and twisted through the air with each of his baton strokes, scampering over rooftops on all fours and missing more than a few of his intended landings while he cavorted in an eager scramble towards the _Tom and Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie. _Super-powered parkour and his baton allowed him to complete the journey in mere minutes, arriving with his chest heaving great pants.

As he clambered over the the last building and dropped to his belly to shimmy towards the edge of the roof, he couldn't suppress the silly grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth because he was going to see his princess – maybe _their_ princess, and that only made the grin wider.

The small brick chimneys, only the tips of which were visible, stood out against the park beyond, thin wisps of smoke trailing upwards, channelled from the bakery's wood-burning ovens.

Still, he had to be clandestine about his surveillance, and all his feline subtly and grace was used to edge his way towards the tiny lip of the roof to poke his kitty ears and green eyes out and survey the situation like a soldier observing an enemy encampment. Marinette's balcony and attic room emerged into view.

Target acquired.

Marinette stood, slumped against the railing of her balcony, and his keen cat eyes allowed him to worry over the vacant expression on her face as she chewed on her lower lip.

Obviously, Marinette was planning on staying in for the evening, having already changed for bed before dinner. She stood on her rooftop, clad in her perfectly adorable but dangerously tight pink sleep pants, and white, pink polka dotted tanktop, its thin black straps pressing into her slender shoulders and highlighting the curve of her throat and the smooth pale expanse of her neck, curving around the fine lines of her collarbone.

And now she was staring right back at him, arms folded up like a preying mantis, hands steepled in front of her face as she leaned against her balcony railing.

"Anything that I can help the great and illustrious hero of Paris with today?" she shouted over the street, causing several pedestrians to look up at what they must have assumed was a crazy person.

A little snort of laughter escaped him, contorting Chat's face like a sneeze, because that was the kind of bold attitude, much like a snarkier version of Kagami's, that made Marinette _Marinette_, at least when she wasn't stumbling all over herself in a blushing fluster, which, as Kagami had pointed out to him, was just as adorable.

Flicking his baton into a staff, he set it at his feet and burst off the roof into a clean and easy flip, bridging the gap between them to land comfortably at Marinette's side, capping it off with a deep bow.

"You've got it all wrong, princess," he said, fist clenched to his heart, the thick belt-tail behind him flicking and swaying in amusement that he couldn't restrain because the darn thing had a mind of its own. "This humble knight is at _your_ service, certainly."

Marinette did not appear impressed.

"Uh-ha," she offered noncommittally with an eye-roll so hard that it nearly looked like the whites of her eyes were going to spin right out of her head, "and to what do I owe the honor of being graced with the presence of the great Chat Noir?"

"Honestly," he said as he rose, noting the slight down-turning of her lips at the shift in his tone from deliberately ridiculous to sincere, "I was just passing through and, well-" A hand pressed to the back of his head and he scratched at it absently. "You looked a little lost in thought. As a hero of Paris, I guess I just wanted to check in."

"Can't have people getting akumatized under your watch, right?" she sighed.

Had – had they actually affected her emotionally to the degree that she might be akumatized? Had they completely misjudged? How could he have-

Her weird, toothy smile and a frantic gesture with her hands set his mind at ease, and let him relax his grip on the baton that he realized he was nearly on the verge of snapping in his hands.

"No- no. I'm just joking, Chat! Nothing's really wrong," she assured in a slight rush, likely seeing his slack-jawed expression.

"Don't _scare_ me like that, princess," Chat groused.

"Sorry. I didn't think that you'd take it so seriously."

If he hadn't been the possible cause of her distress, he probably wouldn't.

"No worries, little lady." His chest puffed as he tapped his baton to the padded armour molded skin-tight to his pecs... which he might have been flexing just a little bit. "This cat's made of sterner stuff than to be thrown off by that."

"Well," she hummed in thought, pupil dilating to focus on him in a sidelong glare that she might offer to a passerby with dubious fashion sense whose outfit she was tearing down to the threads and stitches in her mind, "you are a bit of a butt."

"Hey!" he exclaimed as if truly incensed, drawing on his acting experience to throw a flanging pubescent crackle into his complaint, just for good measure. "That's the thanks I get for being worried about a civilian in distress."

"I'm not distressed, Chat. I'm just..." Splotchy flecks of colour marred her complexion with uneven shades of pink and white, the angle of the light throwing them into greater contrast as her upper body plunged down to the railing, head cradled on folded arms.

Was she thinking about how to turn down him and Kagami without hurting them? Without calling forth an akuma?

Needing to find something to busy himself with, he tossed his baton in the air, drawing her eyes towards it. The thin black rod arced upwards, spinning, green paw-print Chat Noir symbol pulsing as he reached out a hand to catch it on its downward tumble before, taking note of her still slightly stern face, he readjusted the angle of his shoulder and arm imperceptibly. The baton clattered against his fingers, sending him into a hissing fumble to try to catch it properly, which only resulted in the little weapon deflecting off his hand.

And smacking him right in his face.

Marinette snorted again, breaking out into sincere laughter which she tried to cover with her palm while the little heaving motions of her chest rocked her entire body. Her eyes clenched shut tight, but the wavering of her mouth, tiny muscles in her cheeks seeming to fire at random, made her look half amused and half apologetic for laughing at him as he rubbed his nose haughtily.

He was always willing to take a hit for his ladies.

It took a few moments for her to quiet, eventually apologizing to him and coaxing him out of the little huff that he feigned, tail lashing behind him violently in playful amusement, not that she'd be able to tell, nose upturned.

When they had both settled, he found it within him to speak seriously.

"You don't have to talk about whatever it is that's got you feeling a little down, but... I don't know. We kind of helped each other last time something was on our minds, right? When we chatted about Ladybug and your mystery prince?"

"Yeah," she agreed, fiddling with her pigtails and trying to straighten out a handful of hairs that had pulled loose during her laughing fit. "That did help, actually."

"So, is it... is it about your prince again?" Chat asked, leaning back against the railing, resting his weight on his elbows. "Did he turn out to be a Hans?"

"A what?"

"You know, from _Frozen_? Random inexplicable heel turn?"

"Oh. Him, a heel?" she scoffed."Never. He's too ... too perfectly sweet and caring. He might be ... he might be wrong about things sometimes, but no one could put up with ... some of the people he has in his life, like these two girls at our school who are hanging off him constantly even though he hates it, if that wasn't who he really was."

Lila and Chloe, perhaps - ugly, perfectly manicured nails biting into his arms as decorum and expectation had him laughing and smiling even as they slimed into him, hot and stomach churning like the atmosphere in a muggy gym that left him caked with sweat, and dirt, and other peoples' body odour. That kind of sensation was so strange when he usually couldn't get enough hugs from Nino or cuddles from Kagami

"No," she continued.."It's not... well. It is about him. I got confessed to, today."

"Congratulations, princess," he offered, reaching out a clawed hand to give her a little bump to her shoulder. "Someone must have good taste."

She laughed, mirthless and sharp, a little pained and frantic, his cat ears flicking up and rotating to parse the varied intonations. "Yeah. She really does, but not because she confessed to me, that's for sure."

"Nonsense, princess," he corrected in a huff. "I'm sure that she sees how clever and brave you are."

Her brow quirked as she gave him a judgmental once-over and then leaned in to poke his cheek, as if testing whether he was made of flesh and blood, the soft lingering remnants of boyish pudge being pressed up over the edge of his mask.

"You're not going to confess to me, too, are you?" she asked with a grimace that was part playful and part wary. "Because then I'll know that one of Hawkmoth's akuma or an amok is behind this."

"Heaven _forfend_, princess!" he exclaimed to cover a sudden whelming of guilt as she unwittingly called to mind the very thing that had, in part, helped him to decide to try to move on from Ladybug, angling to butt his head against the hand she still held up to his head, now trying to take the temperature of his forehead. "This cat is spoken for."

"Right," she drawled. "_Ladybug_."

"Eh." Admitting to her that his affections had shifted – or been forced to shift – away from Ladybug, even though he'd already done so to the very girl he was speaking to, was strangely difficult.

"No actually."

"What?" The slight crinkling of her nose, as if she'd gotten a whiff of something foul, left him grinning with the desire to boop it, it was so cute. So that's how Ladybug felt...

"But- you've been in love with Ladybug for – for forever!" she said, staggering in shock.

"Yeah," he offered with a sigh, shifting his baton between his hands, and strange as it was, a great stab of hot shame had him flinching away from her wide-eyed expression. "But she doesn't feel the same way, and... I think that I'm okay with that."

"So, that's it. You've ... given up on her." It almost sounded as if she was disappointed, but that made no sense. She never seemed to do anything more than tolerate Alya's 'shipping' talk, much as he and the blogger had gushed over LadyNoir.

And of _course_ he managed to bungle the conversation so badly that they were now talking about his love-life rather than satisfying the curiosity he had regarding _hers_. He nearly smacked himself in the face with his baton, and might just have done it if Marinette wasn't standing right there.

"I – I don't know if that's the right way to put it."

"Oh? Then how _would_ you put it, kitty?" She asked, hands to her hips, a light forward roll of her shoulders pressing her chest together, and he had to struggled to keep his eyes on her face.

Cat scratch that. Staring into those wide, vibrant and defiant blue eyes? The only thing that he had to struggle with was the real danger of losing himself in them.

Sap.

"I love Ladybug and I love ... my girlfriend," he began. "I just choose to be with her – no, that's not right. It's not a choice because Ladybug isn't a choice... maybe, I choose to focus on someone I love who loves me back."

"And how is that going?" she asked with a note of genuine intrigue.

"It... it's good. No. It's great!" he said, arms thrown out to the side as if he was bursting apart. Going by the way that she put a hand to her jaw and scratched just under her ear absently, his exuberance seemed to leave her dumbfounded. "It's not what I thought would happen, but- but it's really good!"

"That's wonderful. I'm happy for you, Chat," she said, yet the way that her gaze flitted away from him and she began to scan the skyline beyond her balcony made it seem quite the opposite.

Of _course_. Wincing with the realization of his own lack of consideration, he clapped his arms behind his back, squeezing his own wrist painfully tight, and began to pace the balcony while she looked out to the cityscape.

As he took in the sight of her, loosing her hair ties and untangling her pigtails to set her locks streaming in the slight breeze, he only hoped that he'd actually made it easier on her. Just like he'd had to give up on Ladybug, she had to give up on Chat Noir.

"But what about you?" he asked in an attempt to break free from a line of thought that still stung, leaping to the balustrade of Marinette's balcony and delighting in her giggle when he began to sway back and forth, feigning a fall on a tight-rope walk. He tended to get ahead of himself with ridiculous, elaborate fantasies.

"What do you mean, you silly cat?" Marinette laughed, though she was eyeing him carefully.

She was watching to see if he was going to fall, ready to intervene.

She was looking out for him.

At that moment, as he steadied himself and bent down into a crouch next to her, still on the railing, he was grateful that the green-hued lenses of his mask would hide his misting eyes.

"Well, you said that a girl confessed to you today. How do you – uh... feel about that?"

"Honestly?" Mulling over her response took her a few tense moments, during which her mouth ranged through a series of indescribable little twitches, shifting from frown to smile to quirk and back in rapid succession. "I don't know? See, this girl was ... she's actually really ... nice, tough but, like, awkwardly charming and self-sacrificing. You know that guy that I told you about?"

"Your sweet prince?"

"Oh, he's sweeter than a ... a cotton candy burrito." The figure of speech left her in a rush as she grinned and grimaced, hands clenching and unclenching with increasing speed. "But not, like disgusting like that - like a cotton candy burrito that was great and made in the finest confectionary but well-balanced but also kind of funny and sometimes just a little silly like- like-"

"Like a cotton candy burrito?" Chat supplied, hunching his butt up onto the railing of her balcony in order to take a seat, his impeccable sense of balance allowing him to raise a knee to his chest.

"Yeah," she sighed dreamily and deflated at once.

"And what about mister 'cotton candy burrito?'" He sort of liked being a cotton candy burrito.

"Oh. Uh. I guess that she and I were kind of ... rivals for him?"

If he needed any more confirmation than that, he was more of a dolt than Kagami and Plagg thought. She _did_ like him.

But he had to be careful; suppress the urge to take a flying leap of the balcony and start whooping his way across Paris (as you do, if you're Adrien Agreste).

"So, she- she's interested in you now?"

"I- sort of? She's definitely interested in me, though I couldn't tell you why because – because they're perfect together and I'm just an ... ugly spastic dork compared to them."

"Marinette," Chat retorted harshly – more harshly, he realized, than she'd ever heard him in their few prior meetings and it caused her to jerk out of the beginning of what appeared to be a melancholic, rambling spiral.

"You are a beautiful person, inside and out-" google-eyed, she swallowed at that, as if gulping down an entire glass of milk in one go, and he wanted so badly to kiss those slightly-parted lips in that moment that he couldn't fathom how he had failed to realize his feelings for so long.

"But you don't have to _have_ good taste to fall in love with you," he affirmed, taking in the rapid flicking of her eyes, as if she was desperate to escape, and the distinct burst of colour that bloomed on her cheeks.

A quirk of her brow and the beginnings of a scowl crossed her face at the awkward phrasing, and then he plucked her hand from the railing and held it in his own, fingers trailing the divots between her knuckles.

"Good taste or bad, anyone could see how special you are."

After a few seconds spent enjoying her stunned silence, he offered her a massive wink, and in response she huffed and tugged her hands free from his to smack him in the chest.

"Okay, there, Casanova-"

"_Cat_sanova, please."

She rolled her eyes again, because of course she would, and seeing this side of her, the one that she'd shown off so rarely to Adrien, had his heart racing. It was almost like teasing Ladybug, but ... but even better because Marinette liked 'him' back.

"Either way, back off there, kitty," she chastised while pressing her hand to his shoulder and giving him a light shove. "You've got a girlfriend, or so I'm told."

"Just telling you the truth, princess. Don't sell yourself short."

"Okay, okay." She mimed a massive explosion with her hands, fingers twinkling as if scattering stardust. "So I'm this wonderful, beautiful, _magical_ princess."

He nodded sagely, chin between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm glad that we agree on something."

"But what do I _do_?"

A huff escaped his nose. That was really the rub, wasn't it? Intestines tying themselves into knots, palms itchy inside his gloves, he knew that he had to measure his words carefully.

"I take it that you didn't turn her down outright?" he asked tentatively, trying to get her to open up because he already had the answer to that.

"No. I couldn't just... shove her confession back in her face."

"Do you... do you like girls?" he asked, gripping the balcony railing tight.

Her head titled to the sky. The clouds shifted and rolled with the heavier winds above them. A light twitching of her cheek coupled with fluttering eyes, something like rapid-eye-movement of a sleeping child, left him feeling slightly sick with anticipation.

"I... I don't know.

She said it so helplessly.

"You know it's okay if you don't," he assured hesitantly, "or if you don't know... you know?"

Bravo Chat Noir. Really cementing that suave reputation.

But it made her snort, laugh lines spreading out around her clenching eyes.

"Yeah, Chat," she huffed, hand to her mouth to hide the little, silly smile that he'd only caught a flash of when she first started to snark at him. "I think I follow you."

He'd make an idiot out of himself twice a day everyday if it meant lifting Marinette's spirits like that, or getting Kagami to crack one of her increasingly-frequent natural smiles.

"So, do you want to talk about it or, uh, her?" he continued awkwardly once the pressure had deflated entirely, the air being let out of Marinette's lungs.

"I... Yeah." There was a little frown of uncertainty, almost like the one he saw on her face whenever Lila began spinning a new web of increasingly ridiculous lies, and he could only dig his claws into the rail more tightly as he wondered what that meant.

"You said that she was, what," he stumbled, "charming and self-sacrificing?"

Thank you Nathalie Sancour for the memory drills.

A nod and a faint smile had him relaxing, rising up to his full height which put her at nearly four inches shorter than him.

"Yeah," she almost sighed and it was very nearly wistful. "She and I are interested in the same guy, and- and she actually held off for a long time for _me_. She told me that I was hesitating, and that she never does. That's one of the things that's so cool about her. She goes after what she wants without letting anything get in her way."

"Sounds pretty forceful. I get that, I suppose – liking a girl who knows what she wants and is willing to do what it takes to get it."

"But don't you get it?" she replied, face lighting up in that cute and enthusiastic way it did when she started talking about a new design. "Because we're friends, she _didn't_. She cared enough to give me a chance; I just never took it."

Kagami had alluded to that, but the knowledge that Marinette appreciated it properly only made her all the more special. His 'Gami deserved that kind of recognition – the kind that she didn't get from her mother.

"It sounds like you care for her, at least."

"Of course I do," she replied as if offended. "She's such a good friend, and was always trying to include me and push me to tell A- to tell the boy we like how I felt, and she was so .. so sweet and honest and hopeful when she told me how she feels about me that- that I just wanted to..."

"What?"

"To-" She shrugged helplessly, naked shoulders rolling up. "I don't know, hug her and tell her that it would be alright."

"Well, princess, that's just further testimony to your massive heart. Like I said," he added while gesturing at all of her, "beautiful inside and out."

She waved him off as if she didn't believe him and he made a note to compliment her that way as Adrien. See her withstand _that_.

"But that doesn't mean that I have feelings for her. I'd do that for any of my friends when they were struggling a little bit."

"Well, then, is there anything about her that isn't ... just friendly?" That was the rub, and the very crux of the issue. She'd been a beautiful blushing mess between him and Kagami, but was that just embarrassment? "I mean, I know that some of my guy friends are good looking, but it's a completely different feeling than the one I get when-" He cleared his throat and sniffed, a claw flicking over his nose. "When I look at my girlfriend."

A palm rose, smacking against her face that was slowly blooming with a hearty flush. Her lips moved, the sound of her voice so soft that even he with his enhanced hearing couldn't pick out the words.

"What was that?"

"I said," she added, still in a mumble, "that- that she..."

"Is everything alright?" Chat grit out. A hand rose and fell back to his hip, claws digging into the mystical spandex-leather of his costume. "She- she didn't do anything, did she?"

What he really meant was '_he_ didn't do anything, did he?' Yet he couldn't say that.

"She has really sick abs, okay!" Marinette nearly screamed, wheeling on him, throwing her fists to her sides.

He could have roasted marshmallows with a blush that hot.

"Well," he began in a small voice, blinking rapidly like a confused child. "It kind of sounds like you might like girls."

"Yeah," she sighed, collapsing onto her forearms and leaning into the railing while blowing out a raspberry, "but what am I going to do about that? I- I just..."

"You don't have to tell me," he offered gently. His hand, tentative for a moment because he was about to press his glove against her naked flesh, smoothed over her shoulder as he gave her a comforting squeeze, mindful of his claws, "but I'm here to listen if you need it."

"It's just that I.. I loved him for so long that it feels like I'm giving up," she muttered into her arm, though her head tilted over towards his hand.

"On him?" That really didn't make any sense, unless... unless she meant that she was going to become _his_ rival for Kagami.

"No!" she nearly screeched, jerking up to shake her head. "Not on him because – uh... I mean, it's not giving up on him if we're – if it's a girl or- uh..."

He held up a hand, tension bleeding from his shoulders and spine as, given his inside knowledge, that was enough to placate him and allay his fears. "It's okay, princess. Just take your time."

"Uh, well. Not _him_. It's like giving up something... childish but- but important," she said while curling her arms around her torso in a way that made him really want to throw himself around her shoulders and give her some cuddles while demonstrating the healing properties of a cat's purr.

"Whenever I thought of being with him, I saw ... an ideal – this abstract thing where I got everything exactly as I wanted and it was like – 2.5 kids, my dream career, my dream guy. It was all-" She frowned, though it was thoughtful, rather than bitter. "A stereotype. And then I'm looking at her and suddenly I'm this ... blushing stuttering mess and it's frightening and exciting and ... _weird_... I didn't think that I was ... different."

"You know that it's okay to be different, right?"

"I know that. I've got friends who are- well, a boy that I dated for a little while explained that he was 'pan,' and his sister has a girlfriend, but I have a lot of problems, Chat. Like, so many that you wouldn't even believe it. I'm already ... _different_. I worry about things all the time, and my – my mind gets away from me when I know that it _shouldn't. _I just thought that I was – oh, _" _she nearly raved and rambled, voice growing more strained by the word, before jerking to a stop as if she'd hit a mental wall, eyes suddenly wide and desperate as she slapped her palms to her temples.

"God. I was going to say '_normal_!' Th-that's horrible. How could I ever think that Juleka and Luka aren't _normal _when they're two of the kindest people I know, and what does that say about _me_ that I would even _think_ about it as if they weren't and- and they're so much stronger than me because I don't even know if I could handle being so open and honest about it all, and- and I don't-"

Unable to stand even a single moment more, even though he felt that he owed it to her to let it all out, he curved his arms around her stomach and pulled her back into his chest, her ramble cut off with a sharp intake of breath that had her inflate in his hold. Unsteady hands grabbed onto his forearms as he squeezed tight, his anxious purr racing through both of them as she craned her neck to stare into his face, wide-eyed. A tight grip on her belly allowed him to stabilize her as he rubbed his chin into the top of her head.

"Sorry, Marinette," he mumbled, suddenly desperately worried that he had overstepped. "You just looked like you could use a hug."

"Uh- yeah. Hugs are good," she stumbled. "I like hugs."

"Princess, whoever this girl is, you said that she cares about you. If that's true, whether you care about her as a friend or something else, you can trust her enough to be honest with her. Just talk to her. I know that, whatever happens, you'll work it out just by... talking through it."

"You –" She gulped before continuing in a indecisive whisper, "You think so?"

"I do," he affirmed with a smooth nod, his voice coming out far more sure than he actually was given his own anxieties, "and whatever you decide, I hope that she makes you happy, princess, as a friend or something else. It's nothing less than what you deserve."

While he would have preferred to keep her in his arms, she seemed to need the comfort of his grip for only a few moments, as she stiffened in his hold, that look of confident resolve that reminded him of Ryuuko and Ladybug settling over her features.

"... so do I," she said, tone not quite fitting with her expression as she patted his arm in a silent request for him to release her. Of course, he acceded with an awkward flush as he ran a hand through his hair. "You're right she and ... the guy we both like have to sit down and figure things out."

"I'm sure that he'll be very grateful that you two are thinking about how he feels in all this."

"Of course, Chat," she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I- I could never hurt him. No matter what happens, or how I feel, that's the most important thing."

Behind his mask, Chat Noir did not get misty-eyed.

He started to cry, turning his face to hide it.

Just a few tears, but there was the swelling tightness in his throat and the way his tail that had been so lively and enthusiastic only moments earlier drooped, flaccid, and the piercing pain of his fangs in his lips...

After a decade-and-a-half sealed up in the cool, sterile Agreste mansion, his only friend the overbearing Chloe who sometimes seemed to care more for his status than for _him_, and his only companion his mute bodyguard and even that was lucky because Kagami hadn't even had _that_, the mixed rush of emotions was more than he could name or describe.

How could he have been so lucky to find two people who cared enough to ... to make how _he_ felt the most important thing?

How could he make that up to them when they might have worse needs than his own?

Apparently, Marinette had been mulling over something while he'd been moping over himself again, as she turned to him, the light of the low sun in the sky casting her pale skin in a glow while shimmering in those nearly blue highlights in her hair so that it looked almost like it was liquid silk threaded with strands of woven sapphire.

Again, he knew that he was a sap, but good lord! Was it any wonder that, as Plagg put it, he was well and truly whipped?

"You know, Chat?" she offered slowly, considering him with a critical eye as if she had only just realized that he was a leather-clad cat-boy and was assessing his sanity. "That girlfriend of yours?"

"Yeah?" he sniffed. "What about her?"

"She's pretty lucky to have you." A smile and a shove that sent him clambering up to the balustrade. "You're... you're a sweet guy too when you want to be. Ladybug missed out on something."

"Princess, let me tell you that _I'm_ the lucky one," he said as he bowed to hide a smile that was too wide and adoring to cover over as anything else but the result of infatuation.

"And as for LB, well... " Rising to his full height, face still angled away from her just enough to hide how smitten he must look, he offered her one of his characteristic two-fingered salutes. "Maybe that was lucky too."

And he was off with a laugh, yelling behind him as he nearly collided with a street sign, "Take care of your princess, princess!"

Chat Noir may just have made the Ladyblog that evening because he did, indeed, whoop most of the way home, even if he did so just slightly tearfully.


End file.
